CANTO FOURTH.
Auspicious art! before whose magic spell,
Disease and pain shrink shuddering back to hell,
Whose touch, like that mysterious gem of old,
That changed all baser metals into gold,
Restores the faded floweret to its bloom,
And saves the victim from the threatening tomb:—
Direct my song and teach me to rehearse
In the smooth numbers of enchanting verse,
Those varied stratagems employed by thee,
To soothe the pangs of frail humanity.
In nature’s vast domain, with curious eye,
Search through the earth, the ocean, and the sky;
Ask of the beast that crops the flowery plain,
And fish that threads the billows of the main;
Ask of the bird that journeys on the wind,
And reasoning man for nobler flights designed;—
If any link in wide creation’s chain
Of golden harmony, produces pain;
Or, in the general frame, is found a flaw,
But from resistance to wise nature’s law?
And this resistance comes from man alone,
Who vainly thinks to shake th’ Eternal’s throne;
Who spurns the good to humble virtue given,
And madly builds himself another heaven.
Folly with wisdom holds unequal strife,
In bold infraction of the laws of life.
If then the teeth, designed for various use,
Decay and ache, ’tis only from abuse;
And lo, triumphant art can well ensure,
At least a remedy, if not a cure.
Whene’er along the ivory disks, are seen,
The filthy footsteps of the dark gangrene;
When caries comes, with stealthy pace to throw
Corrosive ink spots on those banks of snow—
Brook no delay, ye trembling, suffering fair,
But fly for refuge to the dentist’s care.
His practiced hand, obedient to his will,
Employs the slender file with nicest skill;
Just sweeps the germin of disease away,
And stops the fearful progress of decay.(37)
Fair science, thus, with timely care combined,
Becomes the faithful friend of human kind;
Reverses, oft man’s miserable fate,
And serves his cureless ills to mitigate:
Extracts the poison from his tainted breath,
And plucks the feather from the shaft of death.
From long neglect which nothing can atone,
Should caries excavate the solid bone,
Destroy the bright enamel in its way,
And lay the nerve quite naked to the day;
Still dental science, subject of my song,
Invents expedients to redress the wrong.
’Tis then the world’s bright god, so highly prized,
That earth and heaven are daily sacrificed
Upon its altar, wrested from abuse,
Performs in nature one substantial use:—(38)
Unlike the sacrilegious part it bore
At thundering Sinai’s trembling base of yore,
When Israel’s blooming daughters gave their gold,
That Aaron, frail and impious priest, might mould
The idol calf—unlike its task assigned,
To bribe, and buy, and subjugate mankind;
To purchase love and friendship; and descend
A heritage where noble virtues end;
To be, with those who basely covet it,
The villain’s honor, and the dunce’s wit;
The shining claim that elevates the clown
To all the stupid mummery of the gown;
The lure by which the genius oft is led
To give the termagant his bridal bed;
The current bribe to hireling virtue given;
The bartered substitute for truth and heaven!
This idol god, that thus usurps the skies,
The artist now to noblest use applies;
Transmutes its form with Cæsar’s head impressed,
Or in Napolean’s robes imperial dressed,
To soft and yielding lamina;—with skill
The practiced dental surgeon learns to fill
Each morbid cavity, by caries made,
With pliant gold:—when thus the parts decayed
Are well supplied, corrosion, forced to yield
To conquering art the long contested field,
Resigns its victim to the smiles of peace,
And all decay and irritation cease.
Yet oft, through ignorance or negligence,
’Twere hard to say, through lack of common sense,
The fatal spoiler works his secret way,
With noiseless industry from day to day,
All undisturbed, till, lo, the work is done
That leaves to art new conquests to be won.
’Tis thus the solid teeth, from year to year,
By folly or misfortune disappear,
Announcing man’s inevitable doom,
And pointing to the portal of the tomb.(39)
But mark the triumphs of victorious art,
When sighing fair ones see their hopes depart;
When speech unsyllabled offends, and when
The lisping notes of childhood come again:
When vicious chyle from undigested food,
Abates the vital vigor of the blood;
Then—ever prompt to dry misfortune’s tears,
Again the artist’s magic skill appears.
In climes remote, where sacred Ganges flows
From Thibet’s mountains of eternal snows,
Or far beyond the golden Gambia’s source,
Where Lander sought the Niger’s mystic course;
The lordly elephant, in hoary pride,
Toils through successive ages to provide
The ivory tusk; the fertilizing Nile
Breeds the huge Hippopotamus, whose spoil
Supplies new treasures;—and the ocean wave
Nurtures the sea-calf in his rocky cave,
To furnish fit materials to impart
Increased importance to the favorite art.
And now, while every sister art aspires
To light her torch at more celestial fires,
The Dentist, e’en, too proud to lag behind
The bold aeronaut who rides the wind,
Or the adventurous mariner that braves,
With bellowing steam, the fury of the waves,
O’erleaps the bounds to ancient science known,
And to all past experience adds his own.
Thus, strange to tell, is daring genius led
By truth and heaven, exultingly to tread
Untrodden fields in nature’s realms afar,
Beyond the milky way or polar star.
Behold the dental artist’s bright array
Of magic wonders glittering to the day;—
The white stalactite from the mountain cave;
The branching coral from the ocean wave;
The crystal from the rock; the gem that shines
With decompounded light from Indian mines;
And alabaster; and that yellow stone
That graces jealous beauty’s virgin zone;
The brightest gifts of every varying clime,
Resplendent spoils of nature and of time;—
And see, obedient to his ruling will,
Their forms transmuted by his plastic skill,
Till, as when Cadmus, coveting to reign,
With teeth of dragons sowed the Theban plain
A marshalled host sprang vigorous from the glade,
In blazoned arms and towering plumes arrayed;
So spring to light, while love her flag unfurls,
A shining panoply of orient pearls.(40)
With aids like these, from nature’s store supplied,
And following nature man’s unerring guide,
The artist bodly ventures to restore
The dental arch, till, perfect as before,
The teeth in order greet the wondering sight,
A theme of admiration and delight!
Let servile tongues applaud the glittering state
That decks the vain, hereditary great;
The circumventive arts of dark chicane,
That mark the general game of loss and gain;
The statesman’s tricks, in search of sordid pelf,
To prove that none are patriots but himself;
The feats of arms that strew th’ embattled plain
With mangled limbs, and crimson all the main;
Be mine the task to render just applause
To those who toil in virtue’s nobler cause;
Whose serious thoughts and labors are designed
To mitigate the woes of human kind;—
Whom works of usefulness and love employ,
Like Him who fills unnumbered worlds with joy.(41)
END OF CANTO FOURTH.